Herod and the principle of pleasure.

…a misunderstanding still socially unassailable.

“My patient, who regained his mental health thanks to analysis, fell during the Great War[1], like so many other young men rich in talent and with a bright future ahead.” This note was added by Freud in 1923 to the original text of Notes Upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis, or The Rat Man case/ Original illustration by Jacopo Ricci.[2]

A misunderstanding - as banal as the biological difference between male and female - has accompanied the principle of pleasure ever since Freud chose to name it, having realized that the removal of that principle was present in all psychopathologies, from the neglected to the severe.

Indeed, the ‘vexata quaestio’ remains socially unassailable as to whether civilization can or cannot coexist with the principle of pleasure.

For, despite being precocious and already present in the newborns, it does not ‘naturally’ degenerate into something harmful or aggressive: except as an individual elaboration - which can be individually corrected[3] - of a sanction which can no longer be imposed upon the humiliation suffered.

 Marina Bilotta Membretti/ Cernusco sul Naviglio – December 20, 2020

TutorSalus.net – Freudian journalism

[1] Freud refers to the First World War (1914-1918). 

[2] An independent illustrator from Valenza/ Alessandria - Italy, Jacopo Ricci was born in Milan in the 1980s (1988, to be precise). He has always drawn, but dedicated himself definitively to pencils and brushes only after finishing high school. He collaborates with online magazines and creates commissioned works. In 2018, he illustrated ‘Dottor Tremarella’ (a self-published book) and ‘Guarda Oltre’ (also self-published). In 2019, he took up screen printing. 

[3] See “Osservazioni su un caso di nevrosi ossessiva, o il Caso dell’uomo dei topi”, S.Freud (1909) in ‘Sigmund Freud – Casi clinici 2’ Edizione integrale di riferimento, 2013 Bollati Boringhieri editore pp.47-136